Leftists think that, because they fight for minority causes, minorities will join them in fighting for Leftist causes out of a sense of obligation. Sort of like a guy who takes a girl out to a nice restaurant and therefore expects her to have sex with him. They feel like minorities owe them - I've heard them say this explicitly several times. There are few things in life more enjoyable than watching their heads explode when they discover that minorities have minds of their own.

Lt. Bigot:

If nerd subculture should demonstrate anything, it is why traditional sexual mores are a necessary part of society. In their weak, pathetic nature, nerds subscribe to sexuality corrupted by liberalism. If you'll notice, every nerd is a feminist, completely castrated of his masculinity in favor of sexual "equality." He acts a feminist enabler, nodding his head at the drivel leaking from between a feminist's legs, perhaps hoping that someday he will find himself in her bed. What he doesn't realize is that he is an object of contempt and scorn for feminists, who see men as the ultimate enemy. The feminized nerd is merely a pawn, a man rendered harmless and sterile, to be used as a tool. Nerds undoubtedly think that they are the "right kind of man," gleefully supporting feminist ideology, not understanding that a feminist would only settle to use him as a living, breathing dildo while she continues her droning activism.

I can't imagine the brokenness that causes nerds to grovel at the feet of those who continually harp about the evils of men.

This brokenness, of course, demonstrates itself in the homophilia of nerd subculture. As nerds are intimidated by masculine men and the gender roles they embody, they gladly embrace anything that sets itself against gender norms (as they themselves are an affront to traditional gender norms). Gay people, trans people, furries, and a whole host of gender abnormalities are prevalent in nerd subculture specifically for this reason--anything emasculated is welcome into their abode.

It is said that what is called 'the spirit of an age' is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.

Andrew Yeoman:

The first principle of survival is this: you have to want to survive. Since the European peoples do not want to survive as a distinct culture they will be subsumed by those with a greater will to power.

Agustine Confessions:

All men are united by one purpose, temporal happiness on earth, and all that they do is aimed at this goal, although in the endless variety of their struggles to attain it they pitch and toss like the waves of the sea.

iSteve on Fame from "Heinlein: The Mosses of Nerds"

Heinlein’s life story, beginning with lower-middle-class poverty, is similar to that of his idol, H. G. Wells, the pioneering science-fiction novelist. Wells, however, was a giant figure in early 20th-century culture, while Heinlein’s renown was narrower. That sort of ghettoization is ongoing. Andy Warhol is still famous for saying 43 years ago that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. It’s more likely that in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people.

Chinese proverbs:

--- Wealth does not pass three generations.

* Meaning: It's rare that the wealth of a family can last for three generations (the 2nd may see the value of hard work, but the 3rd forgets it).

* Explanation: In business, the first generation works extremely hard, so that the second generation reaps the benefits. By the time the third generation arrives, the wealth is squandered.

Prostitution, sometimes called the worlds oldest trade, is booming in Greece, and a lot of prostitutes aren't happy about it.

Researchers from the University of Pandios say at least 10,000 prostitutes work the streets of Athens, a city whose seamier districts house 500 brothels and attract more than a million people a year for sex.

What bothers many Greek prostitutes is that they no longer dominate the business.

According to the study, Albanian prostitutes, many of them minors, have inundated the market, offering visits called three-minute tingling thrills for half of what Greek prostitutes charge. And, researchers add, without practicing safe sex.

They're ruining our business, says a prostitute named Marilena. We should chase them away.

Instead of chasing the newcomers away, Greek prostitutes are themselves on the run. They say tough Albanian pimps use terror and brutality to chase them away from their corners.

They send 10 thugs to clobber and rape you if you don't give up your corner to their girls, says a Greek prostitute named Sophia, who claims it happened to her.

Greek authorities say the surge in prostitution is the result of Albanias unrest. Desperate refugees say they resorted to prostitution after losing everything when several pyramid schemes collapsed, plunging the country into anarchy. A general election there is aimed at restoring order.

But the university study suggests that most Albanians on the streets were forced there by pimps cashing in on the crisis.

Albanian men are raiding their own country, says Professor Gregory Lozos, a sociologist at the university. Whatever they find, girls or boys, they bring to Greece.

Such findings have sent shock waves across Greece, fanning a media frenzy about child and adult prostitution.

Police and vice squads have responded by sweeping the streets, rounding up scores of illegal Albanians each day and sending them home. But in no time, officials say, the Albanians sneak back over the frontier and go back to work.

The fallout from Israel's May 31st seizure of an aid convoy headed for the Gaza Strip is revealing some new dimensions to the incident. Credible information has surfaced that the Turkish NGO organizing the ill-fated Peace Flotilla, Insani Yardim Vakfi (known as IHH), has ties to the international jihad. IHH allegedly raised funds and recruited Muslim fighters for holy war in the Balkans and Chechnya.

In the ongoing crisis in relations between Tel-Aviv and Ankara, Israel’s most fervent supporters in the United States have been quick to seize upon the IHH charity’s jihadist connection. Yet they omit the fact that key figures within the Israel lobby have long encouraged the use of mujahideen in Eurasia to advance U.S. interests. And the very same lobby that now warns of Turkish power has been instrumental in its rise.

It’s inaccurate to claim that the mission to Gaza was just a grand terrorist ploy, but certain activities of its sponsors should not be overlooked, especially in a geopolitical context. If IHH was involved in finance and logistics for past conflicts in Bosnia and the Caucasus, such operations would align with Turkish strategic interests. This is especially relevant since the flotilla had Turkey’s informal support.

AIPAC and the usual array of neoconservatives are currently in overdrive to defend Israel’s botched raid and link the Gaza aid effort to terrorism. The neocons have also quite suddenly begun to express alarm at Turkey’s growing role in the Middle East now that the Jewish state's relationship with Ankara is at an all-time low. So while the IHH-jihadist connection deserves to be publicized, it’s far from the whole story.

Over the past two decades Israeli and Turkish interests in Washington have enjoyed a cozy partnership of mutual benefit. In 1989, the ever-ambitious Doug Feith and Richard Perle founded International Advisors, Inc. to increase defense technology transfers to Turkey. Since that time, the Israelis and Turks built a noticeably close Beltway alliance, with the Turkish lobby playing sorcerer’s apprentice to AIPAC, JINSA and other Jewish policy organizations.

Throughout the 1990s and up to the present day the Israel lobby has provided groups like the American Turkish Council expertise in managing the cash flows that power K Street and Capitol Hill, as well as access to its networks in government and the defense industry. This assistance has ranged from the relatively overt business of influencing legislation (such as killing Armenian genocide bills) to joint intelligence collection of advanced U.S. weapons technologies. Needless to say, Israeli and Turkish espionage gets little play in the media. The success of both lobbies’ political operations has led to a growing convergence of interests with lawmakers and the foreign policy establishment, so spy scandals are quickly swept under the rug.

Besides Perle and Feith, other prominent partisans for Israel have been instrumental in securing U.S. support for Turkey. These include Paul Wolfowitz, the late Congressman Tom Lantos, and former ambassadors to Ankara Mort Abramowitz and Marc Grossman. According to the former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sybil Edmonds, many of these figures were also under investigation for their close contacts with Israel’s Mossad and MIT, the Turkish intelligence service.

Even when examining the public side of influence campaigns, the intimate links between Israeli and Turkish lobbying organizations in the U.S. are immediately apparent. The Sunlight Foundation’s 2008 record of Turkish embassy contacts is largely a story of meetings and communications with AIPAC, JINSA, the ADL, the American Jewish Council and similar parties. The Israel lobby may rail against Turkey in the aftermath of the flotilla debacle, but this newfound concern belies years of collaboration in manipulating Washington’s power centers.

In addition to snagging lucrative consulting contracts, the neocons fostered the Turkish connection for purposes both ideological and strategic. Drawing inspiration from the thought of scholar Bernard Lewis, the neocons saw Turkey as a model for the development of the Open Society alongside “moderate Islam”[1]. Richard Perle implied that the nation would serve as a platform for U.S. ambitions to transform the “Greater Middle East” after the September 11th attacks. Neoconservative policy planners have also been consistent advocates for Turkish entry into the EU and Muslim immigration to the Continent.

Alongside its status as a longtime Israeli ally, Turkey has been pivotal to U.S. plans for routing Caspian energy resources from Central Asia into Europe. Oil pipelines like Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the prospective Nabucco natural gas project are intended to create an East-West Corridor under American control. Militarily, the U.S. alliance with Ankara allows the Pentagon to enhance its power-projection capabilities within Eurasia. And while the Turks are proving less cooperative than desired, Washington still looks to harness their regional clout to eventually confront Iran and undermine Russia along its southern periphery.

In its bid to attain a dominant position in the heart of Eurasia, the U.S. runs covert action programs employing Islamic fighters. This has been the case since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the neocons have formed the vanguard in support of this policy. It has been alleged (and it is highly likely) that these operations have been carried out in close coordination with Turkish intelligence and associated paramilitary outfits. Far from being limited to cooperation with the Kemalists, these ventures extend to transnational Islamist networks such as Pennsylvania-based Fethullah Gülen’s organization.

From the conflicts in the Balkans to Chechnya, luminaries of the Israel lobby have been behind initiatives to create U.S.-aligned Muslim states in Europe. In the run-up to Operation Allied Force in 1999, a veritable who’s-who of neoconservatives including Elliott Abrams, John Bolton and William Kristol pressed mightily for the bombardment of Orthodox Serbia and Kosovo’s occupation. They were successful in their entreaties and would go on to sponsor Kosovar Albanian independence in 2007.

The neocons have also played a prominent role in U.S. policy elites’ efforts to exploit instability in Chechnya. Former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz and Abrams, in addition to many of the usual suspects, are active members of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC). The ACPC’s ultimate aim is to detach the Muslim republics of the north Caucasus from Moscow, thereby paving the way for new energy pipelines westward and Russia’s further fragmentation. Organizations such as the ACPC grant the perpetrators of atrocities like the Beslan massacre respectable cover in a wider geopolitical game.

Whatever opinion one might hold regarding the justice or injustice of the May 31st flotilla raid, it has exposed deep contradictions in the Israel lobby’s dealings with Turkey and jihadist groups in Eurasia. The IHH charity has been linked to mujahideen activities in the Balkans and the Caucasus; strangely enough, so have some of Israel’s most influential devotees in America. To top it off, the neocons are issuing fearful proclamations regarding Turkey’s ascent when the movement’s leadership helped facilitate the emergence of a powerful neo-Ottoman state.

The men from Washington’s top foreign lobby may style themselves champions of Israel. Never, though, should they be mistaken as defenders of the West, given their complicity in its dissolution.

Studying Jewish History in a wandering way, I asked myself this. Whydid Constantine allow Jews to exist at all? He made all Pagans,Christian and made it a capital offense to convert to Judaism,circumsize and study Talmud Torah. It seems to me he thought thatJudaism would just go away. After all, in terms of the Roman Empire,they were such a small minority. Another puzzlement,why during the Dark Ages did Judaism thrive. THEN, it's like puttingtwo pieces of the puzzle together. Constantine was scientificallycorrect. However, the Germanic tribes destroyed the empire, not toolong after standardization of Christianity and that's why we're Jewstoday. First the Babylonians, then the Germanic tribes. The irony isthat it was the German tribes. In the meantime, the separated Christianswere busy figuring out how to Christianize the Germanic peoples.

I know this is too simple to be true. But every which way I read starkhistory, it all makes so much sense. I think Hitler understood all thisand said there is only one way. Kill the Jews. In addition, there's alot of modernity in all this.

An additional question, why did these Germanic tribes invade? Seemsoverpopulation and natural disasters. My source is the Encyc Britannicacdrom.

On Jewish survival and/or the survival of particular movements of Judaism:

The vehicle for Jewish survival has been a refusal to assimilate to the localculture. Perhaps the earliest example was "the lost ten tribes". Most agreethat they were merely assimilated into the culture which conquered them. Theremaining two tribes maintained their identity in Babylon, so much so that thecenter of Jewish culture actually moved from Palestine/Canaan/Israel/Judah toBabylon.

Over the centuries, there have been many branches in Judaism. Only historyshows whether the movements have staying power. Today there are four majorbranches and many minor branches. To the extent we observe: "ve-shi-nan-tamle-va-ne-cha" [teach (the tradition) diligently to your offspring], thebranches survive and sometimes even grow.

Branches of Judaism that didn't make it in the long term include Karaism andEthical Culture. Other than Orthodoxy, Reform (ca. 200 years old) is theoldest of the movements. Put in perspective with Orthodoxy (i.e.Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism), all other branches are too young to know if theywill have the staying power [and I say that as an intensely committed ReformJew].

To survive requires teaching to the next generation and a belief that what weare teaching, whether it be O, C or R, is correct. If one demonstratesambivalence in teaching, the next generation picks it up kal va-ho-mer (evenmore so).

Last year, a critical essay entitled The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andrew Cameron (University of Westminster) appeared on the Internet and quickly became a focal point for growing criticism of the glossy and widely influential WIRED magazine. However, the author's difficulty in sorting out the origins of the ideas behind WIRED and it's version of the "Digital Revolution" was painfully obvious in their essay.

I'd like to argue that the group which has consistently promoted the worldview expressed by WIRED and, in effect, publishes and writes the magazine today isn't American at all...it's the English. If anything, WIRED represents yet another attempt to invade American culture and to undermine American political and economic initiative another of the attempts which have characterized American relations with the English for many centuries. WIRED magazine is not an American institution, nor is it even distinctly Californian (although its association with San Francisco is certainly undeniable). And, its ideology is also not nearly as novel as Barbrook/Cameron and some other European commentators seem to suggest although, arguably, it is appearing in a new and, therefore, potentially confusing form. Each of the magazine's elements, including free-market economics, hedonic lifestyle, techno-utopianism and, crucially, complete disdain for the uniqueness of human consciousness are all specifically and historically components of what I am calling the English ideology. For that matter, the magazine's sponsors are all English (or self- confessed Anglophiles). Its themes are largely English in origin and its strategy of world-domination through techno-utopian revolution is English (specifically H.G.Wells) to the core. Indeed, WIRED is a house-organ for the modern political expression of British radical liberalism and it's philosophical partner British radical empiricism. Politically, philosophically, financially and psychologically, WIRED is a concrete expression of the English ideology.

Who/What/When/Why is WIRED? The WIRED project began when the director of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte (an Anglophile who's ideal digital-slave is an AI-spawned robotic English butler), plucked Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe from obscurity in San Francisco's European sister- city, the other Anglo-Dutch "experimental" metropolis, Amsterdam. Before WIRED, Rosetto's greatest previous literary achievement had been a book describing the high-budget nudie shenanigans at the filming of Caligula. This movie, in turn, was the boldest effort by Penthouse magazine's Bob Guccione, whose introduction to porn-production was under English tutelage in Tangier and who sent his sons to British military finishing schools.

Negroponte's apparent goal was to meld Rosetto/Metcalfe with the now flagging San Francisco-based Whole Earth project of his longtime associate, Stewart Brand (who had previously contributed the book/marketing-brochure, "Media Lab"). First to join the WIRED editorial team was Brand protege and Whole Earth editor, Kevin Kelly, in what was billed as an ambitious relaunch of the original effort designed to amp-up the graphics, capture consumer product advertisers and spearhead the, now digital, techno-Utopian world revolution. Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll were now "tired"; WIRED was now "wired." WIRED, which positioned itself as the journal of this post- psychedelic world revolution, was launched with seed money from Negroponte (buying him the back page and ultimately a best-seller) and from game designer Charlie Jackson. But the glossy mockup failed to attract the crucial second round of investment and WIRED appeared to be still-born until Negroponte introduced them to the San Francisco-based private bank, Sterling Payot, which fronted the money for the magazine's launch. Continued existence, however, was still in doubt until the notoriously Anglophile (a polite word for English in American clothing) publisher Si Newhouse's Advance Publications stepped in for the last push. (No, despite its name, the Newhouse published magazine, "The New Yorker" is actually not an American publication...it's English.)

In this tumultuous process involving financial reorganizations, whatever notions of editorial independence which might have been initially entertained at WIRED were quickly contained. The editorial content of the magazine from its inception has been heavily influenced by the larger utopian agendas of Brand and his Whole Earth-to-WIRED editorial colleague Kevin Kelly. In particular, the multi-national scenarios-planning company co- founded by Brand and previously London-based Royal-Dutch Shell futurist Peter Schwartz, the Global Business Network (GBN), has been decisive in shaping WIRED's "content." From promoting GBN's consultants endlessly with cover-stories and interviews to actually producing a "special issue" on the future totally with GBN resources, WIRED handed over its editorial reigns to GBN and it's New Dark Age scenarios (more on this below) from day one. To be sure, proclaiming the gloomy truth of the GBN scenario- planned and social-engineered future is not exactly WIRED's public mission.

WIRED is all about the "optimism meme" and is committed to catalyzing the creation of a "better world" at least for the five percent of the population who are expected to comprise the new Information Age rulers. This new "class" even has a name: the "Brain Lords" (and what else would the English Ideology call the Information Age aristocracy, anyway?) according to Michael Vlahos, a policy analyst at Newt Gingrich's think-tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Editorial support for Gingrich's brand of "revolution" as well as consistent backing of his technocratic policy advisers, most notably Alvin Toffler, has been a WIRED commitment from its earliest issues. The project which preceded WIRED, the Whole Earth (and it's various off-shoots, such as the computer conferencing system known as the WELL and the newer Electric Minds), had been the product of Stewart Brand et al.'s 1960's efforts to engineer a utopian counter-culture which, it was hoped, would broadly transform society at large.

So, aren't I confusing my tribal history here? Isn't Brand all-American? No, I don't think so. Scratch a Stewart Brand and what will you find? None other than the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson, of course. And, it is from Bateson's lifelong commitment to re- program a humanity which he deeply despised and, in particular, his explicit drive to destroy the religious basis of Western civilization by replacing God with Nature, that the Whole Earth project was born. It was literally the beginning of a new religion with Nature at its center and mankind portrayed as the dangerous ape threatening to destroy it all.

Bateson's British (and American) intelligence sponsored takeover of the nascent field of cybernetics in the 1950's from it's creator, Norbert Wiener, led directly into Bateson's LSD-driven experiments on schizophrenia and creativity in Palo Alto, which in turn, were the origins of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and their house band, the Grateful Dead. Indeed, Stewart Brand's own career as a publicist for what was first conceived of as drug and then computer-based techo-utopian revolution owes much to Bateson's cybernetics guidance. Brand was among the first to recognize that personal computers and computer networks might have even greater potential to re-program the humans who "used" them than the psychedelics which fueled his earlier efforts. Indeed, based on Brand's success at promoting LSD at his Trips Festivals, he was hired by Doug Englebart to stage the first mass demonstration of the mouse and windows system which Englebart had invented at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Bateson is the son of the English geneticist, William Bateson, whose attacks precipitated the suicide of his principle Continental rival, Otto Kammerer, is chronicled in Arthur Koestler's "Case of the Mid-Wife Toad." And, if the Englishman Bateson doesn't satisfy your hunger for a proper tribal genealogy for psychedelic San Francisco, one might consider Captain Al Hubbard (no relation to L. Ron), the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. He was born in Kentucky but by the 1950's had renounced his U.S. citizenship and sailed right up to Vancouver, British Columbia, to become a commodore in their very English yacht club. That's where he set up the world war-room to target the destruction of Western culture (through San Francisco) and from this base that he joined forces with Humphrey Osmond (English military psychiatrist, lead English MK-ULTRA researcher and the originator of the term "psychedelic") and Aldous Huxley (English black- sheep godson of the original techno-utopian, H.G. Wells) to spread LSD among the intelligentsia to achieve the world revolution. To be sure, San Francisco's cultural scene has long been shaped by its close association with English intellectuals and social engineers.

Hey, I Thought "Laissez-Faire" Was French

Don't be fooled by such foreign sounding (at least to some of us) phrases. You can be certain that the free-markets, "invisible hands" and the libertarian thought patterns that have motivated WIRED publisher Louis Rossetto since his college days are all very proper and all very English, indeed.

First there was Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon, then Locke and Hume and then Malthus, Bentham, Smith and the Mills (then Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells). The intellectual movement named after these Englishmen has been dubbed the Enlightenment and it is billed as a radical break with dogma- based religious authority ostensibly in favor of human reason.

Bullocks, as Barbrook would say. Instead, the Enlightenment was an attack on the largely continental-based Renaissance and its championing of imagination, creativity, science and freedom, indeed, on human consciousness itself. As a philosophical movement (which did also have a continental component), the Enlightenment is closely associated with attempts to reform and therefore perpetuate the British Empire (many of these "philosophers" were employed by the British East India Company) -- particularly against those Renaissance inspired upstarts like the gang who revolted and won their independence over in America.

British radical liberalism was its political form (expressed in our days as libertarianism by way of nominally Austrian but actually London School of Economics professor and Nobel Prize winner, Frederick Hayek). It's philosophical twin, British radical empiricism (essentially, re-tooled form of Aristotelianism), is its far-flung and anti-human intellectual form propounding that all knowledge comes from the senses -- denying the uniqueness of human consciousness and laying the foundation for the inevitable degrading of humans to the level of farm animals which always accompanies "liberal" social policy.

Let me hold off from exploring all of the historical and epistemological territory implied by the above comments which are unfortunately far too vast for this short essay. Perhaps, Bernard de Mandeville's, London published, 1714 treatise, "The Fable of the Bees: Private Vice, Publick Virtue", will concisely illustrate the point at hand. Originally published anonymously and still in print in a variety of editions today, Mandeville's thesis is a simple one. According to Mandeville, humans are no more than mere beasts and, he went on to say, vice, corruption and the satisfaction of wanton desire is the only viable basis for building a successful and thriving economy.

It was the satisfaction of humanity's animal instincts that constituted liberty and the aggregation of these acts of private vice that would result in the greatest public benefit. By maximizing human degradation through free-markets regulated only by what Smith later called the "invisible hand" overall profits would be maximized along with "publick" virtue, Mandeville and his cohorts insisted. And, for its obvious role in attempting to address the issue of morality in human affairs, religion was the Enlightenment's arch-enemy -- not because religion was anti- rational, a common but demonstrably ahistoric and ignorant opinion, but because it sought to curtail depravity -- the essence of "liberalism."

It has been suggested that Mandeville's escapades would make a great WIRED cover story but we'll probably have to settle for his 20th century equivalent, WIRED Executive Editor Kevin Kelly. As discussed in Kelly's book, "Out of Control", Kelly has had a life long fascination with bees -- the "social" insects. The book's cover art is swarms of digital bees and the book is little more than a revision of Mandeville's thesis in complexity-theory/A-life clothing. Kelly's thesis should be familiar by now. Any hope of controlling economies or cultures or unfolding events is doomed to suboptimize the results and yield only nasty "unintended consequences." People should be left to do whatever they want -- and eventually they'll buzz back to make plenty of honey (or die after slamming into someone's windshield along the way) just like the bees in the hive.

Mandeville's bald-faced advocacy of depravity would of course find plenty of public support in WIRED's home town, San Francisco. Where else are there public lectures on erotic torture techniques and "advanced no-safe-word topping"? Perhaps, today's average San Franciscan would find little surprising, let alone shocking, in Englishman Jeremy Bentham's ode to the joys of sex with his favorite donkeys. For much of his life, Mandeville's London was ruled by Prime Minister Robert Walpole (who is credited with the free-market maxim "everyman has his price") and for a time, the infamous Hell-Fire Clubs were one of London's principle entertainment attraction. At least until the crash of the speculative South Sea bubble (as all free-marketeering inevitably leads to speculative excess and collapse) forced the public closing of these historic theme parks of depravity.

There should be no confusion on this point. WIRED's cyber-libertarianism is just the latest installment of the now perennial English-led counter-Renaissance Enlightenment project of the 17th-19th century. WIRED's philosophical platform is thoroughly derived from this Enlightenment project and, if its program were to ever become broadly successful, the result would only favor the same ilk of oligarchist "reformers" who started this whole ball rolling a few hundred years ago.

Techno-Utopianism: The Final Imperial Solution

But, it's not sufficient to demonstrate the intellectual genealogy of WIRED to fully describe their tight affiliation with the English ideology. There is a crucial component of the technological and biologically deterministic utopian worldview at the core of WIRED's "content" which must be carefully situated as well. WIRED's techno-utopianism is merely the modern expression of H.G. Wells' attempts in the first half of this century to construct a technocratic global empire ruled by a new elite much like the audience that WIRED seeks to rally behind its now digital but still self-consciously revolutionary banner.

In its various forms, following Thomas More's coining of the term "Utopia" with the publishing of his book with that title in 1516, utopian writing and, indeed, utopian social experiments tended to be pastoral and, if anything, anti-technology. It was H.G. Wells who changed all that with his 1905 publication of his novel, A Modern Utopia (one of the few of his 20th century works which is still in print). And, it was Wells who initiated the entire inquiry into a technology-defined future (and, indeed, launched the field now known as futurism) in his seminal 1902 essay, "Anticipations." While Wells is popularly known as the first true science fiction writer, he lived for 50 years after he completed his cycle of four major sci-fi novels in 1897. During this half century, he was very busy designing the future of the British Empire the Third Rome as he put it (or as Toffler would later put it, the Third Wave) as a vision of a world knit together by communications and transportation technologies and controlled by a new class of technocrats.

What Wells' described in volume after volume throughout the rest of his life (both in fictional and essay format) is indistinguishable from the digital revolution WIRED hopes to lead. It's a post-industrial world that has abandoned the nation-state in favor of Wells' World State, that has scrapped the premises of it's industrial past, embraced the scarcity of an anti-growth economics and based itself on the emergence of a newly indoctrinated post-civilization humanity. Wells had devoted himself to organizing a world revolution based on technology, synthetic religion and mass mind-control the same revolution discussed monthly in the pages of WIRED. In Wells' "A Modern Utopia," the rulers are called the "New Samurai" and they are a caste of scientist/priests who social-engineer the global society Wells called the "World State." The well-known "cyber-guru," John Perry Barlow's WIRED-published, "Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace" would have made Wells very happy, I have no doubt. Yes, that's Wells' "World State" lurking in the margins of Barlow's manifesto despite his waffling on the specifics of future forms of "governance" except to say that the future of politics will be conveniently (from the social engineer's standpoint) "post-reason." But, am I not heading straight into the jaws of an overwhelming and categorical contradiction? Wells was certainly no free-marketeer. He was a professed socialist and WIRED appears on its face to be thoroughly free-market capitalist. How could I claim any affinity between the British radical liberals and Wells (and with both and WIRED)? Am I not just gluing together two sets of intellectual forebears who both just happen to be English? How do I avoid the "bizarre fusion" description favored by Barbrook/Cameron? In the end, doesn't my English ideology argument collapse as just another curious historical accident combine with an overworked imagination? I don't think so. Despite the naked attempt to rescue Well's left- socialist legacy in a recent biography by the past-head of the British Labour Party, Michael Foot, Wells was indeed a very strange socialist or to put it in his own words, he was a "liberal fascist." Likewise, when the substance of its arguments are carefully considered, WIRED strikes the pose of a very odd sort of capitalist.

I'm convinced that they both choose to adopt protective coloring to enhance their stature in their respective times and places but that, just beneath the surface, they are both simply utopian/corporativists the same ideological impulse which gave rise to Fascism and not what they may appear to be to the more casual and, too often, more credulous observer.

Both WIRED and Wells are, in fact, utopians and elitists with overarching ambitions of leading a world revolution. This revolution is intended to produce radical economic and political transformation which would put their ilk in charge of running a new worldwide empire. From a strategic standpoint fundamental goals and premises Wells, WIRED (and their common antecedent the anti-human Enlightenment radical Liberals) were/are all fighting for the same new imperial outcome. While there are certainly many tactical twists and turns in this plot over the centuries, this entire grabbag is precisely what I've been referring to as the English Ideology the ideology behind a global empire which combines an anything-goes small-scale private life (libertarianism) with rigidly defined large-scale constraints (technocracy). If you would like another description of the same utopian ying-yang, refer to another cyber-guru's (Jaron Lanier in this case) November 1995 editorial in the SPIN magazine issue on the future and his characterization of the Stewards (technocrats) and the Extropians (libertarians) as the post-political poles of discourse. Wells' dalliance with the Fabian Society (he tried to take it over by promoting free-love to the wives of its board members) may be one of the sources of confusion leading to Wells' apparent "socialist" credentials. But, as even a cursory reading of Wells' quickly demonstrates, there was absolutely no room for working class revolt (or certainly working class leadership) in Wells' worldview. He was thoroughly convinced that the downtrodden could never lead or even comprehend the revolution he saw coming. Wells' life was dedicated to organizing a completely new class of technical and social scientific experts technocrats who would assume control of a world driven to collapse and ruin by workers and capitalists alike.

Wells wanted to completely re-program humanity through the creation of a synthetic religion and, like all utopians, had no affection for the commoner of his time at all. Wells considered socialism, in its various Social Democratic to Marxist manifestations, to be a string of completely anachronistic failures and a throwback to the era of human folly and self-destruction which Wells sought to leap past much like Toffler dismissing nation-states and representative democracy as "Second Wave." In fact, Wells was very clear what sort of corporativist world he wanted when identified the earliest of the multinational corporations as the fledgling model of his ideal economic organization. In his 1920's novel, The World of William Chissolm, and the companion essay, "Imperialism and The Open Conspiracy", Wells cites early multi-nationals as the only kind of globe-spanning (and, therefore, anti-nation-state) economic structures which could embody his revolutionary principles. He chides both government and business leaders who think that any remnant of the still British-nation-centered Empire could survive and calls on the heads of multinationals to join in forming the vanguard of his revolutionary "Open Conspiracy."

He also published extensively about the inevitable scrapping of democracy and any form of popular rule in his World State. His "New Samurai" were volunteers who pledged their lives to the pure experience of ruling as a new caste of priest/scholars. No elections, no parliament, no hereditary titles and no buying your way in, Wells was clear that his new ruling class would be a religious elite with global reach. He even predicted that a new field of inquiry, which he termed Social Psychology, would arise and become the "soul of the race" by developing social control techniques which would systematically re-train the masses which he openly despised. And, following WW II, the core of British and American psychological warfare leadership created just such field to pursue worldwide social engineering.

H.G. Wells was a very odd "socialist", indeed. Oh, he did call for the abolition of all socially significant private property. But, then so has WIRED with their repeated claims that in the Information Age intellectual property will disappear in cyberspace a posture that has not gone unnoticed in the more orthodox neo-liberal circles as demonstrated by Peter Huber's scathing critique of WIRED in his piece for Slate, "Tangled Wires." Such a call for abolishing property was also featured by the native U.S. fascist movement, Technocracy which was launched out of the Columbia University Engineering Department with 1932 nationwide radio broadcast. In fact, while Wells rejected the offered allegiance to his "Open Conspiracy" by native British fascist, Oswald Moseley, he did it by pointing out that "what we need is some more liberal fascists."

Being educated as he was, Wells surely understood (and I believe embraced) the philosophical heritage of radical "liberalism." As a matter of fact, independent economic sovereignty (the essence of politically effective private property) is what Wells (and all his empire building successors have) objected to. It is the independence of large scale economic forces particularly those associated with strong nation-states that both Wells and the radical Liberals both objected to so forcefully. It is only such forces, operating with determination and resolve, that function as a bulwark against empires like Wells' World State. Despite their surface appearance of conflict, WIRED-style free-marketeering and Wells' "Open Conspiracy" both lead to the same political- economic outcome oligarchist/corporativist control of a global economy. This is why the modern intellectual progenitor of modern libertarianism, Hayek, spent his career at the nominally Fabian socialist London School of Economics alongside Keynes, they were simply two birds of the same feather. Another ying- yang twinned pairing pointing to a common endgame. While it admittedly flies in the face of conventional categorization, right-wing and left-wing utopian/oligarchists are still fundamentally and most significantly utopian/oligarchists even if their protective plumage might temporarily succeed in confusing some birdwatchers. They differ merely on the tactics, while presenting a home for confused fellow-travellers of all persuasions, while they thump for the same 1000 year empire and imagine themselves sitting behind the steering wheel. This should be no more confusing than watching Alvin Toffler, and his wife Heidi, move from active Communist Party membership and factory floor colonization to becoming chief advisors to Newt Gingrich. Tactics may change; the strategy remains unaltered.

The New Dark Age

What sort of future do the futurists see for us? Despite the sugar- coated promises of wealth and power being held out to those who make the cut and get inducted into the supreme religious cult which gets to play imperial Wizard of Oz, the reality of a Wells/WIRED future won't be nearly so cinematic for most earthlings. As every honest futurist has admitted, the future will be painful and pointless for most who survive. The Information Age will be a Dark Age. It will bring pre-mature death to half or more of the earth's population and it will represent the deliberate scrapping and then forgetting of humanity's greatest achievements.

Perhaps, the harsh truth of the Information Age was best described in Michael Vlahos' January 1995 speech, "ByteCity or Life After the Big Change." Vlahos is a Senior Fellow at Newt Gingrich's thinktank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), and a past geo-political analyst who has led PFF's exploration of implementing the Toffler/Wells plans. Vlahos presents a terrifying future scenario roughly 20 years in the future in which society has stratified into elites and gangs. In fact, life is so threatening in ByteCity that we spent most of our time in our rooms staring at wall sized vidscreens if we're lucky enough to have a room, that is. Vlahos' world is run by stateless modern robber-barons, which he terms the "Brain Lords" and which he characterizes as "rampaging not through the landscape but making billions in the ether." These new aristocrats will come from the merger of telecommunications and entertainment multinational giants and much like in Wells' formulation, the "Brain Lords" do not inherit their class status and they will burn out from looting at an early age. After 40 they will retire to run the world. They will comprise 5 percent of the population, he says. They are Wells' "New Samurai."

Below them he stratifies in the "Upper Servers" and the "Agents" who comprise another 20 percent who will spend their lives destroying the value of professional education and association in a vicious "information" driven chase for individual recognition. Below that, roughly 50 percent of the population lives as service workers slaving 12- 15 hours a day in front their living-room vidscreens "servicing" their global clients in a world that respects no time zones. And the bottom 25 percent, who, if they are not pacified will provide ample motivation for people to stay indoors to avoid being attacked by roving gangs, are what Vlahos calls "The Lost."

Roughly twice as large a population share as those who were discarded by the Industrial Revolution in Britain according to Vlahos, "The Lost" are those that will never become a functioning part of "ByteCity." Sustained by modern "Victorians" who know the threat posed by the poor, "The Lost" are merely the most wretched of the wretches. Life all the way up the line from "lost" to "lord" will entail such radical disruption of personal safety and well-being that, in effect, Vlahos has turned dystopian cyberpunk literature into a policy statement. Naturally, expecting to rise to the top, Vlahos appears to feverishly await the "Big Change." No less chilling is the scenarios planning exercise that WIRED's wizards-behind-the-curtain perform on their multi-national clients. From General Motors to AT&T, the Global Business Network (GBN) charges hefty sums to show the yellow-brick-road towards "ByteCity" to strategic planners and top corporate brass.

In one recent and rare public discussion of the results, GM's top planning team defined the three "alternative futures" which emerged after years of GBN counciling. The first is just like our world and, so by definition, is not very interesting. The second is an eco-fascist regime in which car designs are completely "Green" and the companies can only follow orders. The third is the fun one, however. This is the world in which armed gangs roam the streets and surface travel is a series of car chases. This scenario has already been anticipated with a Cadillac that includes armored protection and a "panic" button installed in the middle of the dashboard. The car has a satellite tracking system built in and it can call the local authorities (presumably your multi-national's private swat-team) and get help when you get trapped by the natives.

What ideology is being expressed by all these 20th century New Dark Age "revolutionaries"? Is this ideology "Californian"? Or, does it have another historical context and another "tribal" association? I merely suggest that accuracy and intellectual faithfulness require us to pin the tail on the real (Benthamite) donkey. This is the Enlightenment-spawned English ideology and, as usual, it's hell-bent on ruling the world over our dead bodies.

In proportional terms, Cuba offered refugee or migrant status to more Jews than any other Latin American country; more, in fact, than was offered by the United States. In addition, despite occasional periods of hostility by certain sectors of the Cuban elite, these Jews were afforded a good reception. Robert Levine offers three reasons for this unusual circumstance. First, Cuba had an open economy with a "worldly" elite, long accustomed to dealing with strangers. This explains the relative absence of the class-based ethnocentrism and anti-semitism often found among Latin American elites. To be sure, prejudice and discrimination existed but, according to the author, tended to be of the "petty" rather than the institutional sort.

Second, because the Jews settled all over Cuba rather than concentrating in one city (much less one neighborhood), their presence never engendered the "ghetto" syndrome so common in other countries.

Finally, accomodation was facilitated by the fact that Jewish migration occurred in widely spaced historical sequences, each with different settlement patterns. The two earliest groups were very successful economically and incorporated themselves smoothly into Cuban society. First came the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardim, who arrived either with the conquering Spaniards or from the island of Curacao, the center of Sephardim culture in the Caribbean. Although not mentioned by the author, Cuba's most powerful "sugar baron," Julio Lobo, was a descendant of this group. This group is not to be confused with later Sephardim migrants from North Africa and the Otoman Empire. Religiously orthodox, poorly educated and non-Spanish speaking, these Jews were always disdainfully referred to as "Turcos." The second earliest migration was that of American Jews. They arrived with the United States occupation troops and held important technical and commercial positions from the start.

In some way, therefore, attitudes had been mellowed for later migrations. These tended to be Ashkenazim (generally referred to as "Polacos") and while they were not as easily incorporated as the earlier migrants, it is evident that things could have been much worse. Those who arrived in the 1920s and early 1930s included a good number of Marxists, who played a key role in the founding of Cuba's Communist party. In the 1930s, especially around the years of the Spanish Civil War, these Jews became targets of a small but influential sector of the elite that had Falangist leanings. These elites also opposed the entry of the next wave of Jews, the refugees from Nazism. Desperate to enter the United States they settled for Cuba as a safe-haven but tended to see the islands as an "immigration hotel" (p. 285). The unintended consequence was that their aloofness minimized possible confrontations with local anti-Semites. It is to this group that the author gives the bulk of his attention, and it is their often-tragic story which provides him with his most dramatic material.

This book provides a powerful sense of hemispheric history repeating itself: refugees attempting to reach the United States by any means including expensive smugglers, the United States attempting to get alternate settlements for them in small Caribbean countries, and corrupt local officials and politicians enriching themselves from this sordid game of avoidance and callousness. As such, this book is about more than just a Jewish diaspora; it is about the many Diasporas which have made the Caribbean Basin what it is.

Harry Knowles, the premier movie geek of Ain't It Cool News, says "Serbian Film" (Srpski film) is "brilliant", "tremendous" and "extreme", and has to be seen to be believed.

It is also a story about the sickest, most depraved dark corners of the underground porn industry. We're talking things that are illegal for a reason. But, you see, what first-time director/producer Srdjan Spasojevic set out to do was not make just a snuff or exploitation movie (which this most assuredly is). Oh no, his intent was to make a metaphor for Serbia itself.

That is why it's called "Serbian Film" and not, for example, "Snuff". All the sick depravity in it is supposed to represent the country, the society, the people of Serbia. In the words of reviewer Todd Brown, "This is a film meant to punish, not to entertain, and it succeeds absolutely. It is genuinely sickening and that is entirely the point."

"Serbian Film" is actually an anti-Serbian film.

Spasojevic, the director, doesn't deny his film is meant to be a metaphorical representation of Serbia. He claims that the film was entirely financed "privately, with donations and contributions from friends." Donations from whom? What sort of "friends"? This kind of money doesn't grow on trees, least of all in Serbia - where the only people with money are crooks and politicians (or is that redundant?). And oh yes, foreigners. Could it be that the "Serbian Film" was funded by the same people who fund Natasa Kandic, Sonja Biserko and other "NGO" vampires, whose only job for the past two decades has been to denigrate, defame and destroy everything Serbian? This is mere speculation on my part, mind you, but I would not be shocked if it ends up being true.

At least we know that Spasojevic didn't get a penny from the government; that's sort of surprising, given that official Belgrade shares his Serbophobia and automasochism. In fact, Spasojevic complains about the lack of official support, arguing that "This is a matter of culture, that represents Serbia in the world." (see interview in Serbian, here)

He has a point, in a way; a horrific, self-hating botched WW1 epic ("St. George Slays the Dragon") got copious government funding, even though its levels of Serb-hate and defamation are child's play compared to "Serbian Film". If one can't get paid for Serb-hating in today's Serbia, what can one get paid for?

That even the government is drawing the line at Spasojevic's magnum opus speaks volumes about its depravity.

The damage is already done, of course. Spasojevic's cinematic equivalent of "Piss Christ" is already touring the festivals in the US and elsewhere, "representing Serbia" to people already all to willing to see it as demonic, depraved and deserving of destruction. In the words of one reviewer,

Never again will you be able to hear or read the innocent phrase "a Serbian film" without a reflexive awakening of the searing images that Aleksandar Radivojevic (screenplay) and Srdjan Spasojevic (co-writer and director) have put on screen.

I just hope Spasojevic gets the reward he so richly deserves for this immense contribution to his nation's culture and history.

Anti-Serbian film, made to prolong and perpetuate stereotypes of demonized Balkan people, title says it all

I am writing this for fairness and justice without any other motivation:

This is a politically motivated film. Why? One or two decades ago, several powerful countries needed to tailor public opinion into an intervention in Balkan conflict. They did so by demonizing the people and completely distorting the line of events, an approach/version followed religiously to present day. Nowadays, when some elements of real truth start coming out, changing perceptions and many take notions that not everyone from Balkans has a villain tag on his forehead - the establishment comes up with this stereotypical unfounded and "politically correct" story reiterating every single bit of media madness of the 90s - sick aggressive and deranged Balkan male always willing to settle any issue by rape, murder, torture, people of mythical mindset living in the past and taking revenge on the world for not having everything the way they want to. The fact that director is Serbian as well as actors does not disapprove my point. I do not care if some director makes an exploitation movie or a movie with sick themes. That movie could be called "slashing movie", "chopping and raping movie", however when you call it "serbian movie" this gets clear political motivation.

Being from the Balkans, I have seen many Serbian movies, authentic movies, ones with real local spirit and humor, those that reflect local culture. And, I can tell you, that authentic Balkan movie is not a hollywoodized, 100% westernized broth. Therefore it is obvious that this movie is not made for local audience: it was made for some other audiences or purposes. Now, this is not the place for me to prove Serbian people are totally unlike this; I know they are. Nevertheless, in spite of perhaps being done well, this movie will always remain a crime towards truth and humanity, just as if you watch "The hurt locker" you will believe all Iraquis/Arabs are evil terrorists who live on killing friendly Americans. Same goes for some movies about Viet Nam, and you can also believe that Serbs are "a bunch of illiterates, degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists". Is it really a coincidence that this movie resembles previously quoted words of Joe Biden uttered on Larry King show during 1999 intervention in Serbia? In case you love exploitation and Hollywood(-style) movies are a place where you compensate for your geographic and cultural ignorance, you may as well believe Joe.

The center-right was in power between 2004-2009...Certainly not decades ago.... That little evidence shows how little you know on the subject...Yet being an ill informed individual who visited the country as a tourist (once or twice perhaps?) you make wild claims about Greek politics of which you obviously have not even an elementary knowledge...

The current prime minister of Greece is a full blown american and his first and original name was Jefferson Papandreou (he was born in the US), the family later changed it to Georgios ( this information was available on his wikipedia entry as well until a few years ago ) . He is the "greek" version of Bill Clinton, a real child of the 60s. In reality he is jewish (the maternal line of his father was jewish) and most probably his mother was jewish as well. Until recently there is clear evidence that he was renewing his US passport (...)

The center-left in Greece was developed and supported by the West. The socialist party PASOK was a 100% US creation since it was the only way the communists could be stopped from gaining astounding electoral results in the 1980s. The idea was to create a third force in Greek politics which would be between the Right and the Left, and would also use the leftwing rhetoric and would be supported by the vast majority of those who wanted economic reforms but without having red commissars and soviet troops welcomed to Greece. It is a typical US Cold War strategy which worked pretty well in Greece.Andreas Papandreou (jewish by his mother), the founder of PASOK, spent most of his time in the US, served in the US navy and was a trotskyist (something which apparently opened all the university doors for him in the US) was always claiming that there were 2 Americas, on the one hand there was the "bad" America of the corporations, the CIA, Reagan etc and on the other hand there was the "good" America of the Kennedys, the democratic party etc. He was (according to his claims) with the "good America". For all his anti-NATO, anti-US, anti-West pre-elections rhetoric he kept Greece in NATO, he did not severe the ties with the European Economic Community and of course never expelled the US-NATO bases (and the stationed nuclear weapons) from Greece.

The socialist Papandreou dynasty was and is the sole real pro-american force in Greece. No wonder Jeffrey Papandreou (the current prime minister) essentially severed all the ties Greece had developed with Russia between 2004 and 2009.Andreas Papandreou served US by keeping Greece in all western institutions and away from the USSR, he also did it in a few other ways but no time to mention them here. Jeffrey/Georgios Papandreou serves the "US" by supporting multiculturalism and the "Open Society" policies of Soros which essentially mean the replacement of the native Greek population with islamic/asian and african hordes. Keep in mind that until 1991 Greece was an almost 100% homogeneous country and with 98% Greek orthodox population (the rest 2% were a few catholics of ethnic Greek origin and some muslims). Now? 1/3 of the population are illegal immigrants.... Hostile foreigners who mr Papandreou due to his 1960s "american" way of understanding race and nation thinks they can be Greeks. As he said there can be Greeks of Phillipino or Somalian or Pakistani origin. As you have Americans of Japanese or Mexican origin...

I could go on writing about the behind the scenes Greek politics without stop. But I assume you get the idea....

Let me ask it again, you guys on the other side of the Atlantic if you don't understand the politics of the European countries, please abstain from expressing opinions.

PS I have many relatives in the US, half of them are married to non-greek white americans (Irish, Italians etc). The religious aspect of these weddings is indeed hilarious. The "greek-only" policy of the greek-american families is a thing of the past, third generation greek-americans are more american than greek after all.

In the second chapter Gruen examines M. Porcius Cato, or Cato the Censor, a dominant figure in the second century of the Roman Republic. Gruen aims at challenging modern scholarship¹s common characterization of Cato as a radical antihellene who despised all things Greek, and attributed Rome's 'moral degeneration' to their acceptance of Greek cultural values. He writes, "Cato projected himself as a sharp critic of luxurious habits and lax moral discipline, characteristics conventionally associated with the Greeks -- at least by the Romans," (p. 54). In a few words, Gruen sees Cato's goal as not entirely separating Roman culture from Greek culture, but rather as one of holding to the more austere and conservative lifestyle of the Roman¹s while taking from the Greeks some of their learning and art. In this manner Rome's cultural supremacy could be thrown into greater relief against the lifestyle of the then-subservient Greeks, and also, Roman culture could to some degree be generated and refined in the adoption of those Greek things Rome deemed valuable.

The primary evidence for Cato as an antihellenic figure comes from a couple of extant sources. For one, Gruen notes one of Cato's speeches reproduced by Livy, which he passes off as being practically a fictional reproduction. Also, he examines fragments of an educational text believed to be composed for Cato's son. In regard to this educational text, Gruen posits that Cato may have been extremely harsh in his attack on Greek culture, and in his glorification of Rome in the work, in order to be sure he instilled 'good Roman values' in his son. This document indicates what Gruen asserts is Cato's greatest goal: the establishment of a unified culture and Rome¹s supremacy, which fell short particularly in the areas of art and learning until it began to incorporate a number of things from older, more sophisticated, orientalized Greece.

Gruen entirely discounts the speech Livy attributes to Cato. The speech, claimed to be a reconstructed part of a debate on the repeal of the lex Oppia (sumptuary laws) in the year 195, blames Roman luxury and extravagance on imported Greek culture and attacks the adoption of certain Hellenic gods, claiming these newly syncretized deities are being valued above those of the Romans. Gruen sees this speech as a complete reconstruction, practically a piece of fiction from Livy's own mind, filled with anachronisms and other difficulties. In particular, the speech is filled with"clichés of the Augustan era" (p. 70), giving Cato the language of Livy's own time. Livy also discusses the statues of gods taken from Syracuse and Athens, those same deities and figures Cato allegedly claimed were being prized above Rome's. Gruen points out that there could not possibly have been enough marble statues like this in 195 B.C., and that this must certainly be an anachronism. Evidently, Livy manufactured the speech himself and it ought to have no merit in the eyes of classical historians or in our sketching of Cato's character. What is also salient is that Gruen often makes this sort of argument in his work, using distinct moments and facts to fit broader themes. He would like the reader to believe that since this antihellenistic speech was created by Livy, Cato is no antihellene. In order to be sure, one must look at further evidence.

Gruen continues to cite examples where Cato attacks luxury, philosophy, oratory, or any number of things which seemed to detract from the citizen's duty to the state (e.g. conduct and holding of political office, warring afar, etc.). Cato's vision of this duty most definitely had its roots in Rome's history of fearless, stoic soldiers and agrarian farmers, of toil and struggle that held little place for pedants and sophists, empty words, or extravagant living. Certainly he used Greek culture as a target for his critiques of certain lifestyles and habits, as it provided a foil for stressing effeminacy and moral decline in Rome. But Gruen posits these attacks to be nothing more than a means for effectively criticizing problems in Roman culture, keeping Rome supreme, unique, and in tune with its cultural roots. Unfortunately, Gruen discusses these cultural roots very little.

Gruen goes on to discuss Cato's life, which serves to distinguish him not as an antihellene but rather as a sort of conservative moralizer and 'nationalistic' politician. Cato had extensive knowledge of Greek language and literature and was no stranger to Hellas' customs. Specifically, Gruen cites a speech Cato delivered in Athens. Although Cato knew Greek well, he chose to speak Latin to his audience. Gruen holds the reason for this to be more complex than modern scholarship¹s hasty assumption that Cato loathed Greek culture. Another interpretation is that Cato aimed at giving Greek culture a sort of secondary status to that of Rome, thus being sure to establish latin as the lingua franca for the time and region. Gruen writes, "Roman superiority could best be asserted by a man who commanded Greek language and literature -- and found them wanting," (p. 81).

So, far from being a vicious opponent of Greek culture, Cato has a vision of Roman culture that placed it superior to that of Hellas but also existed in relationship to it. Through familiarity with Greek culture and proving mastery in it, one could more legitimately make a claim of its inferiority. Also, Roman culture could assume its finest aspects, and fully flesh itself out in contrast with Greek culture. Gruen is careful to point out that Cato even claimed the origins of the Latin language and writing to be in Greece. In the end, one sees a proud statesman who aims at reinforcing and creating Roman values through their relationship with Greek culture. Cato is no antihellene, but a moral reformer and one of the fathers of late republican culture in that volatile time.

But there remain a few problems with Gruen's treatment of Cato. He gives Cato an exceptional amount of importance, performing a fairly narrow study while attempting to make a case for the factors in the cultural development of the Roman republic. The question becomes: Even if Cato's ideology prevailed in Rome and in the evidence we see today, how great was Cato's actual effect on Rome? Such a narrow focus on one man leaves other important figures out of the discussion, which leads one to wonder what other views might have been popular or at least existed in the Roman Republic. Somewhat related, one must wonder if Gruen's argument is too clean, in hindsight giving Cato too much credit and consistency of character, while people are rarely so easy to figure out according to the rationality of their actions. And lastly, one must note that Gruen often makes assumptions where there is no supportive evidence. For example, since Gruen manages to find arguments contradicting Cato being antihellenic, he makes the leap that Cato then in fact was a proponent of Greek culture as long as it is given a secondary importance to that of Rome. There is no evidence for this sort of position, of course, but it is certainly a possibility.